Cheri and Madelyn Petersen had done “a little bit” of fishing, including a charter boat trip for salmon on Lake Michigan, but they’d never tangled with anything like the behemoth that now was sending large bubbles to the surface from the murky depths of the Rainy River.

The fish, a lake sturgeon, was giving Cheri and her daughter, Madelyn, 14, everything they could handle, and they took turns at the reel. Not only to give their sore arms a break, but to share in a moment the likes of which neither of them had ever experienced.